Category Archives: conference

CES 2008 coverage coming soon

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The Consumer Electronics Show – CES 2008 – the number one technology event in the world, is coming up fast and I’m excited to go as a first time attendee/press dude.    One of the nice tech blogger press perks is I’m getting invited to a lot of cool parties all over Las Vegas.   There is so much activity it’s hard to get a handle on it all. Like Las Vegas, there are far more things available than you could possibly do in a single day.  

The whole city of Las Vegas is basically taken over by geeks, geek wannabes, and even major pop celebrities during the several days of CES excitement.  I just heard that Kevin Costner’s rock band will be performing at one of the award shows.  Thousands of exhibitors and about 140,000 attendees make this the world’s premier tech event, where many companies will showcase and release hardware and software and hope for a good reception, because a good showing at CES can make or break a small company and even some large ones. 

Sunday’s keynote will be by Bill Gates, but I have to admit I’m more excited to attend the Monster Cable retailer awards at the Paris Las Vegas where Mary J. Blige will be performing as part of the party.   Now *that’s* a party!

In addition to my take on the event hundreds of other bloggers and CNET and all the mainstream media will have a lot of good coverage. Even MSNBC’s bombastic Donny Deutsch will be blogging the event for his “Road to CES” specials for his show “The Big Idea” 

Xiamen, China

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Update:   I’m going to China in April but will miss SMX China.  Xiamen was harder to get to than I’d originally thought given the rest of our schedule and China contacts are popping up in other places, so the new trip is Hong Kong April 1-4, Shanghai April 5-8, Beijing April 9-15, home to Oregon. 

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Still planning the trip to China for SES  SMX China 2008 in Xiamen, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.    I am running into the internet challenge of really old information though.   For example I’d heard about a really cool ocean ferry that goes from Hong Kong to Xiamen.   It’s listed in my very new guidebook but some online sources say it’s not running anymore.   I got hopeful with this online blurb:

Hong Kong – Xiamen 1400 0800 Weekday 7245 from China Hong Kong City Pier  Xiamen – Hong Kong 1500 0900 EveryMon, Wed, Thu, Sat to China Hong Kong City Pier

Only to find the page was last updated…in 1997!

Google’s travel listings are pretty challenged in the USA so I should not be surprised that finding accurate China info could be trouble.    I’m online most of the day but have to admit the best sources of general China travel information so far have probably been word of mouth and my guidebook rather than online, though I’ve been using all of them together for best results.

The plan as of now is to fly to Hong Kong and spend about 3 days, then Train to Shanghai (20 hours, sleeper) for about 2 days, then to Beijing (13 hours by train) for about 3 days, then to Xiamen for Conference (which I’m hoping will be at the Xianglu Grand Hotel because it looks simply awesome!) then back to Hong Kong for the flight home.   But we are coordinating 3 schedules so we’ve still got some logistics to go.

China Visas appear to be a bit of a challenge as you can’t get them by mail.  I think most travel agencies will do this for you, but we are not planning to use one so somebody may need to go to San Francisco Chinese consulate.  Not a big deal as Charley lives down there and I’ll be near there later in January at the Web 2.0 Conference.

Donny Deutsch

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Donny Deutsch has an excellent show called Donny Deutsch “The Big Idea”.  The show is on MSNBC and features interviews with Deutsch and business heavyweights like Bill Gates as well as young entrepreneurs who have had breakthrough ideas that led to successful companies.    It is a lively, intelligent look at clever folks in business like the early Donny Deutsch himself, whose innovative approaches to advertising build a small family business into a billion-dollar advertising empire. 

Here’s an article about Donny in New York Magazine.  It is an excellent piece about Donny Deustch that notes his humble beginnings helping his father the advertising executive, then rising to prominence as the top Madison Avenue advertising executive with a net worth of some $200,000,000 and a billion dollar agency empire.    His strategies have been somewhat unorthodox and he seemed to use bravado, good pay, and outrageous behavior to keep the troops producing, though the article suggests his partners were not happy with their relatively low stakes after the sale of his advertising empire that made Donny Deutsch a megamillionaire.

Donny Deutsch is now hosting a series of shows leading up to CES Las Vegas featuring technology people and ideas.

I’m noticing the poor search engine tuning done for his website here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/22206030/site/14081545/ and his new CES blog here: 

http://www.cnbc.com/id/22274025/site/14081545/ 

So, wouldn’t it be fun to see if I can get ranked in the top spots for the term ” Donny Deutsch ” over the next couple of weeks heading into CES?   Sure it would Mr. Donny Deutsch!     This is my target Deutsch post (not to be confused with the German Postal Empire Deutsche Post).   This page should legitimately rank fairly high since I’m providing a lot of information about Donny Deutsch, but in theory should probably rank *below* Donny’s own blog and TV show website.   Let’s see how Google does with this task given MSNBCs lack of search optimizing for their man, Donny Deutsch.

Hey, here’s a Wikipedia Article about Deutsch and his company, Deutsch Inc.

So, this is another in my series of search engine experiments Mr. Donny Deutsch.  Hope to see you at CES!

CES 2008

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Click HERE for the latest on my CES Experience

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas I’ll be blogging as much as possible, liveblogging the Bill Gates keynote on Sunday and trying to get a grasp on the big picture at this huge conference.    I’m really looking forward to seeing the latest gadgets and trends in technology.     One of the gadget themes I’ll explore are language translators.   These are important in travel and I’ll hope to test a few during the China trip this April.

Franklin has a translator device that looks like one of the best offerings out there – a twelve language translator where you type in the word and it speaks it back to you.

Google’s got an interesting new language translation “bot” for the Blackberry that Google is blogging about here.   Maybe they’ll have a Treo version later?

Copy, right?

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I’m writing to so many blogs these days it’s getting hard to keep them all straight.    Here’s my thinking on the Lane Hartwell incident over at the Webguild blog.

Webguild is the Silicon Valley marketing and internet networking group that meets at Google every month and sponsors a couple of conferences each year.   It’s a volunteer effort but run with exceptional professionalism and innovation by Daya Baran (Webguild President) and Reshma Kumar (Webguild Vice President).    I’m looking forward to the Web 2.0 Conference to be held in January.

Hong Kong Harbor, Beijing’s Forbidden City, and the Great Wall of China

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Wow.   Planning the China Trip is really getting exciting for me.   I’m going to get to see some of the things I’ve heard about for most of my life – things that are on “The List” of stuff I just had to do like Hong Kong Harbor, Beijing, and more.  China’s Yellow Mountains are on my list as are is the Terra Cotta army in X’ian, but those will probably have to wait for the next trip because this one is filling up fast and, frankly, I’d rather relax and enjoy things than try to see too much stuff on my first trip over.

It now appears that the best approach may be to fly to Hong Kong.   I’m finding the Hong Kong flights are in the $700 range rather than the $1000+ to Beijing, and Hong Kong is somewhat closer to Xiamen where I’ll be at the SES China conference.    Also, I’ve learned that the train system in China is modern, comfortable, cheap, and extensive.    I like the idea of rolling along between cities rather than just plane hopping, and since I have the time I’m thinking a good route might be this:

Fly SFO to Hong Kong and spend a few days seeing Hong Kong Harbor and the city.  

Get a deluxe sleeper car for the trip to Xiamen.

Continue on the train to Beijing where I’m meeting up with friends.

Train Beijing to Shanghai if we decide to go there.  

Train from Shanghai to Hong Kong, perhaps stopping in any neat places I scoped out during the earlier trip in opposite direction.

Web 2.0 Conference and Expo

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WebGuild will be presenting the second annual Web 2.0 Conference and Expo on January 29, 2008.   The location is the Santa Clara Marriot.  I missed this event last year but will be there this time and I’m really looking forward to it.   Last year Marissa Mayer was the keynote and I’m hoping she’ll be speaking again.  She’s one of the best thinking technologists anywhere, and a major reason Google continues to dominate the online landscape.

Note that this event is not to be confused with the Web 2.0 Expo series put on by O’Reilly Media or the Web 2.0 Summit also by O’Reilly.

Computer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and Search Engine Strategies in Xiamen, China

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OK, it’s time to start getting excited about several events I’ll attend in 2008 – China SES in Xiamen, The Computer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and the Web 2.0 Conference from WebGuild in Silicon Valley. More about China later as I start to plan that trip with my two table tennis pals, one of whom was born in Beijing. Here’s a great recap of Rand Fishkin‘s experiences last year at this conference.

CES Las Vegas is the world’s most super gigantic humongous computer show. Bill Gates is the keynote this year.

There will be amazing new product launches and thousands of exhibitors hawking the latest and greatest electronic gadgetry. I expect at least a few new amazing Google phones based on Android SDK and literally thousands of neat new gadgets for hands on investigation. Hopefully Scoble and Podtech will host another Bloghaus at the Bellagio. I’d read about CES Bloghaus 2007 last year and it really sounded like the happening place to hang out during the conference as a gathering point and 24/7 watering hole for bloggers.

I’m already getting a lot of emails and some phone calls about setting up press appointments with the CES Exhibitors. For many this is the key place to build the buzz for new product launches. I’ll hope to report on the neatest things I see in travel and tourism as well as anything amazing that really stands out.

SES China 2008 in Xiamen

CES Las Vegas 2008

The rumors of PodTech’s death may not be greatly exaggerated?

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Update:   As far as I know PodTech is doing fine as of December 2007, and the rumors back in July were bogus or exaggerated.   Just heard from John Furrier that PodTech will again host a “bloghaus” at CES, one of the neatest “social tech” ideas last year in my opinion.    I’m a big fan of all that Robert Scoble has done to evangelize quality corporate blogging and really wish PodTech the best.

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Mike Arrington is reporting that PodTech is in trouble. I think this is consistent with the idea that content is no longer king – it’s a pawn in the big game to leverage the flood of free content and social networking activity, a game where the winners will NOT be the product of doing the “right thing”, rather winners will be the survivors of the evolutionary process that drives our rapidly changing digital ecosystem. Biological evolution works *away from failure* rather than towards success, and it seems clear to me this is also how internet company evolution works.

Mike suggests that PodTech might survive in modified form by scaling back and lowering their “burn rate” and focusing almost exclusively as a production and advertising house focusing on their own clients. I wrote over there:

Good insight as usual Dr. Mike.

“… get their burn rate very low” ummmm – can you cite any examples of a companies that did this in time to survive?

I enjoy Robert’s perspectives and consider him a real blogging leader and a digital inspiratation to the rest of us, but I don’t have the time to invest in his videos or PodTech’s other rich content. (just the facts please!)

Producing quality content is now playing with pawns rather than kings, and for some time it will be the companies that leverage the flood of free content or help people process the maelstrom of content that will win. e.g Facebook, Google, and your personal favorite winner, TechCrunch!

The painful thing if PodTech dies is that they did so many thing exactly “right”. They saw video and blogging as sweeping new online paradigms, they hired Robert Scoble who is nothing short of a digital inspiration to bloggers and video folks – he’s one of the elite onliners who puts his blog, money, reputation where his mouth is and actually engages non-elites regularly and with gusto and stays about as Web 2.0 connected as you can without exploding. Also, PodTech sponsored what looked to me like CES’s best new idea – the Bloghaus.

But planning and quality don’t necessarily breed success in biology or business, and PodTech may be just one more example of the harsh new evolutionary realities facing any digital animal.

As Paul K infectiously notes business plans are overrated. Twitter’s lack of a business plan may be the flip side of the evolutionary challenges – disorganization won’t hurt them and might even be part of the reasons it’s looking like Twitter will be …. hugely successful.